(From the The Morning Chronicle, July 19, 1825)

THE LONDON UNIVERSITY A Discourse Delivered by a College Tutor at a Supper-Party Ye Dons and ye Doctors, ye Provosts and Proctors,     Who are paid to monopolize knowledge, Come make opposition by voice and petition     To the radical infidel College; Come put forth your powers in aid of the towers     Which boast of their Bishops and Martyrs, And arm all the terrors of privileged errors     Which live by the wax of their Charters. Let Macintosh battle with Canning and Vattel,     Let Brougham be a friend to the "niggers," Burdett cure the nation's misrepresentations,     And Hume cut a figure in figures; But let them not babble of Greek to the rabble,     Nor teach the mechanics their letters; The labouring classes were born to be asses,     And not to be aping their betters. 'Tis a terrible crisis for Cam and for Isis!     Fat butchers are learning dissection; And looking-glass-makers become sabbath-breakers     To study the rules of reflection; "Sin: f " and "sin: q " — what sins can be sweeter?     Are taught to the poor of both sexes, And weavers and spinners jump up from their dinners     To flirt with their Y's and their X's. Chuckfarthing advances the doctrine of chances     In spite of the staff of the beadle; And menders of breeches between the long stitches     Write books on the laws of the needle; And chandlers all chatter of luminous matter     Who communicate none to their tallows, And rogues get a notion of the pendulum's motion     Which is only of use at the gallows. The impurest of attics read pure mathematics,     The ginshops are turned into cloisters, A Crawford next summer will fill you your rummer,     A Coplestone open your oysters. The bells of Old Bailey are practising gaily     The erudite tones of St. Mary's ; The Minories any day will rear you a Kennedy,     And Bishopsgate blossom with Airys. The nature of granites, the tricks of the planets.     The forces of steams and of gases, The engines mechanical, the long words botanical,     The ranging of beetles in classes, The delicate junctions of symbols and functions,     The impossible roots of equations — Are these proper questions for Cockney digestions.     Fit food for a cit's lucubrations? The eloquent pages of time-hallowed sages     Embalmed by some critical German, Old presents from Brunckius, new futures from Monckius,     The squabbles of Porson with Hermann, Your Alphas and Betas, your Canons of Metres,     Your Infinite Powers of Particles, Shall these and such-like work make journeymen strike work     And 'prentices tear up their articles? But oh! since fair Science will cruelly fly hence     To smile upon vagrants and gipsies, Since knights of the hammer must handle their grammar,     And nightmen account for eclipses. Our handicraft neighbours shall share in our labours     If they leave us the whole of the honey, And the sans-culotte caitiff shall start for the plate, if     He puts in no claim to plate-money. Ye Halls, on whose dais the Don of to-day is     To feed on the beef and the benison, Ye Common-room glories, where beneficed Tories     Digest their belief and their venison. Ye duels scholastic, where quibbles monastic     Are asserted with none to confute them. Ye grave Congregations, where frequent taxations     Are settled with none to dispute them — Far hence be the season when Radical treason     Of port and of pudding shall bilk ye, When the weavers aforesaid shall taste of our boar's head,     The silk-winders swallow our silky, When the mob shall eat faster than any Vice-master,     The watermen try to out-tope us, When Campbell shall dish up a bowl of our bishop,     Or Brougham and Co. cope with our copus.                         (Winthop Mackworth Praed, The Morning Chronicle, July 19th, 1825)

 [Explanatory note by Sir George Young in  The Political and Occasional Poems of Wintrhop Mackworth Praed, 1888: p.61:

Appeared in the Morning Chronicle of July 19th, 1825. By the "London University," it is necessary to explain, was by no means intended the present anomalous body, which sets papers, and gives degrees at Burlington House. That Institution was only founded twelve years later.  The London University which Thomas Campbell promoted, and which Praed sang, was a very substantial Academic Body, and a real addition to the educational machinery of the country; and that it has never, up to this year of grace 1887, succeeded in making itself quite intelligible to the inhabitants of London generally, is due to the unkind way in which it was changed at nurse. Its very name has been appropriated, since 1837, by an oddly constituted Board of Examinations, which never had a professor, or a student, in the world; and itself has been forced to survive under the appellation of "University College, London."  The opposition of Oxford and Cambridge was largely responsible for this miscarriage. — Crawford, probably an old doctor of divinity who was archdeacon of Carmarthen, and long before a Fellow of Trinity. — Dr. Coplestone, Provost of Oriel, Oxford, was the most conspicuous personage at this time to be found among Dons at that University. —  Canon Kennedy, Praed's rival in the lighter walks of scholarship, but far superior to him in solid attainment, was Senior Classic in 1827, and still survives (1887) as Professor of Greek. — Sir G. B. Airy, till lately Astronomer Royal, was Senior Wrangler in 1823. — "New futures from Monckius" is explained by the author himself in a note as follows — " In one of Dr. Monck's learned editions of Greek Plays, a, slip of the pen had left a Latin note commencing Facile persentibunt Juvenes etc. A caricature of the learned professor appeared soon after on King's Parade, with the inscription as above."   Plate-money, a contribution formerly exacted at College from young men of family and fortune, who entered as Fellow-commoners. The ostensible purpose of it was the replenishing of the College plate. — The great meeting at the London Tavern, at which the project of a London University was started, was held 1st July, 1825. The Lord Mayor presided. Speeches were made by Brougham, Russell, Mackintosh, Denman, and Campbell; the last called attention to the fact that London, Constantinople and Madrid were the only European capitals which were without a University; which he defined as "a great place of liberal education, established on a system of combination and cheapness." In that sense London still remains "linked in unholy alliance with the capitals of the Turk and Spaniard." It has been left for the present generation to remove this reproach.

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